As discussed in the last EPEL meeting we decided it was best to have a
chairperson to help EPEL get off the ground over the next 6 months.
Here's what I'm looking for in a chairperson
1) Somone who can convey a consistent EPEL message to the public,
especially when it is officially launched
2) Must be able to balance what's best for EPEL, the larger community,
3rd party repo's and the users when their needs conflict.
3) Someone who is close to the EPEL community and can put EPEL community
needs above their own
4) This person must be accountable (if they go all crazy we can always
ask the board to remove them)
5) Primarily a facilitator, when decisions cannot be made, the community
is split or opinions are not-obvious, this person can call for a vote or
simply make the decision on their own.
The idea here is that this person will be here for 6 months which, in
Fedora time, is not very long. I have no fears about what this person
will do because A) they will be accountable and B) It's just for 6
months. If we don't like what they've done we can remove them at that
time or, more likely, pick a different governance model. I don't think
EPEL is mature enough to need an extremely formal government which IMHO
is perfect for a chairperson. They can listen to what's up and people
can go to the chair with concerns they care about.
The question now is where does this leave the SIG? Same place, we meet,
we discuss, we ultimately do the work. It's the spirit of this
agreement that's important and I think in practice we'll find this a
very easy / beneficial situation.
-Mike

I would like a chairperson who works with RHEL/EL as part of their
daily job. I think that means everyone involved in EPEL thus far, but
I thought I should clarify that. I am not however, *that* concerned
about vision for EPEL. We have a steering committee for vision, and I
would hope the entire committee would offer input and make decisions
on vision and direction.
For a chairperson, I want a person who should represent the SIG.
Obviously the SIG could handle all of these functions, but one person
as a front for the community is great from a contact standpoint and
from a chaos-prevention perspective.
* coordination of meetings, and events.
* Someone with experience using EL as well as developing on it/for it.
* Not a dictator, but a facilitator.
* Someone who will hear input from Real EL customers and try to work with them.
* Someone who will work very hard to please 3rd party relationships,
(or at least not hinder them).
* A decent project manager, who's good at meeting timetables and status reports.
stahnma

Hi all!
I already wrote some things I expect from a EPEL chairmen last week, but
here we go again in a different way
In short: I think a chair is very important to keep things rolling and
working.
The chair should be responsible to do the boring tasks that often nobody
else does otherwise. That includes for example stuff around the SIG
meetings: prepare the meetings, run them, make sure they stay
productive, write the meeting summaries (for the public and FESCo) and
keep the schedule in the wiki up2date. IOW: get things organized.
Further the chair should be the person the Board or FESCo can contact
when they want something from EPEL (which sometimes needs to happen in
private) -- both FESCo and the Board afaics want to have a single person
to contact that is kind of responsible for EPEL. The chair also should
try to be available for and respond to questions in FESCo/Board meetings
and on the different fedora-lists regarding EPEL if needed. Coordinate
the work with other groups like Ambassadors, Infrastructure or Fedora
Packaging is also in parts the job of the chair.
Having a single person to contact is also helpful if outsiders want to
get in touch with EPEL, but can't or don't want to go to a public
mailing list. The chairmen also is kind of representing EPEL to the
wider public.
The chair in his position should also feel responsible to the whole
project area -- e.g. try to keep EPEL running smoothly, make
contributors, users and other groups (like 3rd party repos) are happy
and make sure they feel heard and respected.
The chair for his job shouldn't have much special powers. Only some
might be needed to "herd the cats. One of those areas are IMHO votings:
the recent wiki votings IMHO have shown that coordination and
informations is needed before the voting starts; I also saw some
occurrences of confusing or "to early" votings in FESCo meetings in the
past, that roughly lead to the decision that only the chairmen of the
one that runs a IRC-meeting can issue votings (but htat was never
written down iirc). Maybe other special powers are needed over time, but
I don't think so atm; if they show up then it can be decided by the
Steering Committee as a whole when needed.
BTW, neither the Steering Committee or its chair should be kind of
dictators. We just need a group of people that does the decisions, that
itself needs someone on the top IMHO. But the goal is to balance what's
best for EPEL, the larger community with is represented by the EPEL SIG,
EPEL contributors and EPEL users.
CU
thl

"Too many secrets", what happend to Fedora's original leitmotiv of
full transparency? Sure, some things are discussed in PM, but defining
a role as such and even twice? I would go the opposite direction and
define the chair as accounting to the committee and asking the
committee for any stealth operations.

the recent wiki votings IMHO have shown that coordination and
informations is needed before the voting starts;

No.
These votings have shown that there were two items that you personally
objected against over two months and did all that was in your power to
avoid getting it to a vote. These items even made us have a steering
committee from your preferred "we decide on consensus"-model (so it
really is an irony, that originally you supported an anarchy-model and
now you push to a presidency model), so we could finalize them with a
vote. But you continued to block voting and raising bars, producing
semi-technical arguments until finally the votes had the outcome you
desired.
So, will such a powerful chairman manage this better? From your POV,
if you get elected to be the chair, certainly, from my POV it will
become even more difficult to get anything voted lest even to have a
vote pass. Last time we needed two months to get to the vote, what
will it be with a Thorsten as solely empowered to issue votings? Two
years? No, thanks.
I think the very bad handling of these votes show that we need a more
democratic and open system where everyone in the committee (or even
the SIG) can issue votings, not that a chairman can block these to his
liking.
--
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net